Cal will trot out another unfamiliar roster when the Golden Bears tip off coach Mark Madsen’s third season with a nonconference game against Cal State Bakersfield on Monday night in Berkeley, Calif.
A former Stanford star and two-time NBA champion with the Los Angeles Lakers, Madsen took over a 3-29 program following the 2022-23 season and, led by transfers, has improved the team’s win totals to 13 and 14 the last two years.
In an attempt to keep the streak going, Madsen has once again gone the transfer route to replace his top players, with leading scorers Andrej Stojakovic and Jeremiah Wilkinson having left for Illinois and Georgia, respectively.
This year’s new look features nine transfers and four freshmen. They join three returning part-time starters — DJ Campbell, Rytis Petraitis and Lee Dort — as Cal transitions into a program, Madsen hopes, that will have more roster continuity.
“From Year 1 to Year 2, unfortunately we were not able to retain anyone with starting experience,” Madsen told reporters about his Cal tenure. “Now from last year to this year, we’ve been able to retain three players. As we go from this year into next year, we anticipate having even more success with retention across the board.”
The opener against Cal State Bakersfield will be a rematch from last November, when the Golden Bears prevailed at home 86-73. The Roadrunners went on to finish with an identical record to Cal’s 14-19 under longtime coach Rod Barnes, who resigned his position in September after 14 seasons at the helm.
New coach Mike Scott, an eight-year assistant under Barnes, inherits a roster heavily impacted by transfer departures, but one that returns fourth-leading scorer CJ Hardy.
“I’m a guy who is big on trust and I didn’t feel it was necessary to go somewhere else and have to rebuild that trust,” Hardy told reporters in the wake of the coaching change. “These coaches trusted me from Day 1 and they trust me to help take this team back to the Big West Conference tournament. Our goal is to get back to the tournament. I felt that coming back was the right decision.”
